Sig Christenson is a veteran military reporter who has made nine trips to the war zone. He writes regularly for Hearst about service members, veterans and heroes, among other topics. He is also the co-founder and former president of Military Reporters and Editors, founded in 2002.

June 2014

06/29/2014

SAN ANTONIO — For the parents of U.S. service men and women who died in Iraq's long war, the latest news about advances by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is a trigger for powerful memories and a sense of profound loss.

At kitchen tables, in their living rooms and on visits to the cemeteries where their children rest under white marble headstones, the stories of Iraq's disintegration spark long talks, anger, tears and even laughter.

But they also share a dreadful, sinking feeling that things will get so bad in Iraq that President Barack Obama will yield to critics calling on him to save that nation, even if it means sending thousands of troops back.

06/26/2014

SAN ANTONIO — The Air Force said Wednesday it would dramatically expand its cyber mission in San Antonio, relocating up to 1,440 troops and civilian workers to the city this fall.

Joint Base San Antonio was selected to host three cyber protection squadrons and a command group to operate under the 24th Air Force, which is based at Port San Antonio.

Long home to the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, the city has evolved into a center of cyber and intelligence agencies that include the 24th Air Force, Joint Reserve Information Operations/Intelligence Center, the Air Force Electronic Warfare School and National Security Agency.

06/23/2014

SAN ANTONIO — Federal investigators have found that a Veterans Affairs clinic in Harlingen didn't comply with rules on the credentialing and privileging of surgeons and didn't pay private-practice physicians quickly enough, causing them to stop treating veterans.

The investigation, revealed Monday in a letter by the Office of Special Counsel to President Barack Obama, found issues at VA hospitals and clinics across the country.

The counsel's office, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, uncovered the problems while visiting the Harlingen-based Texas Valley Coastal Bend Health Care System in early 2012. A system spokesman, Hugo Martinez, conceded that his clinics had seen problems.

06/19/2014

SAN ANTONIO — A new VA audit shows the agency last week miscalculated the number of veterans who waited more than 30 days to see a doctor, with the number of long waits more than double what the VA first reported — including sharp increases in San Antonio and elsewhere in Texas.

The updated report released Thursday said 621,985 veterans across the country waited more than 30 days to get into a hospital, up from 242,059 from a May 15 survey.

In San Antonio, 5,016 VA patients, or 81/2 percent of 59,000 appointments, waited more than a month, up from 842 in mid-May.

06/16/2014

Veterans trying to schedule their first visits to a VA doctor wait longer in some cities than new patients seeing private physicians, but experts say the government is neither the problem nor the exception in patient access.

Long waits are a sign of the times, they say, and things likely will get worse for everyone — not only those relying on the Veterans Affairs Department.

“The big part of the problem is that we have a more or less infinite demand for medical services and a limited supply of physicians,” said Phil Miller, vice president of communications for Merritt Hawkins, an Irving-based physician recruiting firm that has studied waiting times in different cities. “That graph, the difference between demand and supply, keeps widening.”

06/13/2014

SAN ANTONIO — Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, on American soil for the first time after five years of captivity, joined the ranks of patients Friday at Brooke Army Medical Center, but he wasn't a typical soldier on the mend there.

The Army won't allow a television in his hospital room, and he isn't allowed yet to mingle and talk with other soldiers. Bergdahl is surrounded by experts trained to help former captives readjust. He hasn't asked to talk with his parents, who waged a well-publicized campaign to secure his freedom.

And after 12 days at an Air Force hospital in Germany, Bergdahl also isn't aware of the controversy that has exploded across the country about the circumstances of his capture and release.

SAN ANTONIO — A Texas National Guard soldier is the latest of nearly two dozen people to plead guilty in a nationwide scheme in which tens of millions of dollars were skimmed from a recruiting program.

Former Spc. Christopher Renfro, 26, of Houston pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in Houston. He'd already pleaded guilty to conspiracy and one count of bribery in the same case, and will be sentenced Jan. 9.

Federal prosecutors in Houston and San Antonio have charged 25 people, most of them soldiers, with defrauding the Recruiter Assistance Program. So far, 23 have been convicted, including a former local Marine who rescued American prisoners of war during the Iraq invasion.